Objective To evaluate the efficacy of ointment rubbing for the treatment of pain by systematic review and meta-analysis. Methods A systematic review was used on CNKI, Wanfang, VIP, CBM, PubMed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library and Web of Science databases. Randomized controlled trials of ointment rubbing therapy for pain were screened according to inclusion and exclusion criteria, published up to September 2021. The improved Jaded scoring standard was used to evaluate the quality of the selected literatures. The studies with scores ≥3 were extracted according to Cochrane handbook 5.1 and then used for Meta-analysis based on RevMan 5.4 software. Results A total of 12 RCTs were included, involving 1249 participants with 7 common clinical diseases. Meta-analysis showed that the effective rate of ointment rubbing in the treatment of ankle sprain and knee osteoarthritis was significantly higher than that in the control group. In all the different diseases included, the VAS score of the treatment group was lower than that of the control group. Conclusion Ointment rubbing therapy is effective and safe in the treatment of pain, especially in orthopedic diseases. How to optimize and standardize ointment and moxibustion prescription and massage manipulation to form the best clinical decision of ointment and moxibustion therapy for pain still needs to be further explored.